Lasers suck. Really bad. Just for the hell of it I compared the energy in a .223 (1300 joules(a little low)) to watts(from DuckDuckGo converter). It’s 0.3611111 Watt-Hours or 0.006018 Watt-seconds. A 6mW laser is worthless compared to a .223.

Most of this is so much BS, anyway. Conventional weapons work in space, as shown by the Soviets and their autocannon test-fires. All you have to do is include lubricant to prevent vacuum welding, and some form of compensation for the recoil forces.

Whatever they wind up using, I suspect it won’t be anything illustrated here. Just like the specialized weapons issued to Air Marshals, you’re going to have to have taken into account things like putting your projectiles into orbit, and all the like. You’re also going to have to worry about shooting up your own life support systems by accident, soooo… Frangibles? A built-in IFF system?

More than likely, there will be two separate weapon families: One for use inside a life support system you want to keep working, and one for everything else, which will likely have to be suitable for going after small vehicles and so forth. The reality is that outside a life-support system, the biggest target will be other, smaller life support systems and drones. Individually suited humans are going to be peripheral issues, and not much worried about. Proximity-fused recoilless rifles or missiles with significant projectiles will be the weapon of choice; probably with some form of terminal guidance and control. Get a warhead within range, detonate it, and anything wearing a conventional spacesuit is dead meat, whether on a planetoid or in open space.

Of course, the other issue is the resultant debris/fragmentation coming back on you and killing your vehicle or suit…

As per my usual commentary vis-a-vis all the wanking about warfare anywhere; best not start such things in the first place. What you might gain is never worth the cost, something that all the so-called “great men” and “conquerors” ought to consider.

Said 55 years ago. Could have worked fusion as a power source in on that.

Portland Antifa seems to have found the practical application.

Projectile design would be quite different too. They could ignore optimizing aerodynamics and concentrate on terminal ballistics.

I remember that one too, but not the title or author. That’s going to bug me for days… I’m pretty sure it was a “name” author and written during the Cold War, but I’m coming up blank otherwise.

The web coughed up another story which I’m sure I haven’t read, by Charles Cloukey in the March 1928 issue of Amazing Stories, about a man who shot himself in the back as his bullet orbited the Moon.

Cloukey died of typhoid in 1931. It’s sort of frightening to realize just how modern “modern medicine” is…

I also found a number of references to Jerome K. Bixby’s “The Holes Around Mars”, from the January 1954 issue of Galaxy, but that was either neutronium or a black hole orbiting Mars.

Just saying…